His wife would look at him somewhat worriedly, as if he meant it. As if here there were a bitter strangeness that lowered all earthly art and charm and comfort and sense of home to a futility. But then she'd manage to laugh lightly, though often she didn't quite feel that way. "You know why we bother, Ed," she'd answer. "Because we want to stay somewhat as we once were. Didn't you always agree to that? Because it's hard to change old habits and limitations, and grasp the freedom you're thinking about, Eddie. Sometimes I even suspect that we try to hide from that freedom." Ed would scowl, feeling all of these thoughts, too. They had all the freedom that men had envisioned long ago: practical freedom from death, except from extreme violence; freedom from aging, freedom of mind, of action, of shape and size; the freedom of peace and plenty, and boundless energy. But beyond all this, like a goad, there often was, already, much more than a ghost of that ancient human restlessness that always had thrived on strength. "Are you happy here, Babs?" Ed asked once when there had been time to doubt. By then they already had two young sons, born of new flesh in an old way. "Of course--reasonably," she chuckled. "Though I have my moods. Then I don't quite know.... But, Eddie, this is the great, marvelous future, isn't it--the one we looked forward to with longing and wonder? We ought to appreciate it completely." "It is that future. But now, sweetheart, it's also just the present." There were incidents to match such restless talk and thinking. There was Mitchell Prell, always groping for new things, shouting down from a cragtop, or from his laboratory, "Hey, Ed! Barbara! Come here!" Maybe he'd discovered a vein of ore that might be mined, or a strange specimen of hitherto unnoticed local fauna or flora. He remained a scientist, while Ed had become a mere builder of buildings. More than likely, the woman Prell had married would be with him--she had been Nancy Freeman of a fantastic origin. That he had separated himself enough from his studies to take a wife was a minor miracle. That these so-different two should be together was certainly another. That she had learned to be both tasteful and poised, though no less vigorous than ever, had perhaps been hoped for by the first romancing thought that had given her real being on Earth. To live in peace, comfort and beauty, Ed now realized, was not a final goal. The wild nomad, like Prell, shouting down from mountaintops, always seeking the unknown and straining to be bigger than his powers--however great they might have become--still had to be served. Otherwise pride was insulted, the urge to learn and progress was defeated; boredom set in, and centuries of life were not worth living.